Quote:
|
Originally Posted by Sharon Knettell
I do think people underestimate the amount of information a serious artist needs.
This discussion belies the notion that an artist is someone who simply picks up a brush, any brush, and daubs some paint, any paint on a surface, any surface. There are those of course who do this because they feel that knowledge is an impediment to artistic freedom.
|
I think gaining information about the longevity of art products is only valid in relation to the interest the artist has in it. Too much concern about artwork conservation on the part of the artist can, in some cases, inhibit the artist.
I don't endorse painting with and on just anything, but going too far in the other direction can colour your thinking when you are actually painting the painting, I am sure. And worrying about getting an equivalent for a colour that has gone out of existence or is transient can be an obstacle to really
seeing what's going on in the painting before you.
What I mean here is that if you couldn't get find perfect cadmium orange, for example, and instead took a colour that was "near enough" you might find that the subtle difference may open up new paths that sweep you to greater heights than you ever expected. I know I am just a young unknown, and, after this post, I suppose a young upstart, but my best and most exciting discoveries happened when, for instance, I hadn't primed properly and when scraping off some of my work found that the painting started peeling to it's core, but what was left was just the image, the suggestion of a figure, I had been searching for for about a year and a half. If I hadn't been slapdash I would never had broken through to this new level, and might never have had my first gallery break and might have given up painting altogether.
The same with colour. My "Mother and Child" painting would not have come about if I hadn't run out of yellow ochre and had to resort to cadmium yellow and orange - colours I had hardly used before. At first they seemed so wrong, so alien, but suddenly, after changing the rest of colours to work with them, everything made brilliant new sense. I had grown and moved on by doing this.
Forget about the alizarin. It's like trying to hang onto your childhood. You don't get to live fully in your adulthood if you do that. Perhaps the other reds don't look as jewel-like because you've organised the rest of your palette to work with alizarin.
If an artist's paintings are worth having around for thousands of years then I am sure the art conservators will have adequate will, knowledge and means of looking after them. All the work they are doing looking after the old paintings now are giving them more and more information to keep paintings in existence.